Federal Court: There is no common law duty on administrative decision-makers to provide reasons for their decisions. Thus, in the absence of a statutory duty, those decision-makers are not required to provide reasons at all. However, if an administrative decision-maker chooses to provide reasons in circumstances where they are not obliged to do so, can a court on judicial review draw an inference from the fact that the decision record is silent about a particular consideration that such a consideration was not taken into account?
Although this decision concerned a non-migration matter, it is arguably relevant to migration matters.
The Federal Court answered the above question as follows: